Through the Looking Glass
by strange-charmed
Summary: While dimension-hopping through the multiverse, Rose Tyler explores the dying TARDIS. She's not prepared for what she finds there.
1. Chapter 1

It's dying, Rose knows. She knows this from the moment she turns the key in the lock. She knows before she takes a hesitant step inside, as soon as she runs her shaking hand along the oddly cold coral, and when the hum that should be greeting her instead meets her ears as a shallow, choked whisper. It's a hello and a goodbye all in one. She'd hoped that coming here would be an answer, that the TARDIS could help her solve this awful mystery of the disappearing stars. Instead, it's simply one more thing she loves that she can feel slipping away from her. It's her friend, her home, and she can feel its life ebbing away, its golden tendrils of time grown sallow and brittle. She can't stop it - somehow she knows this at the core of her being. She swallows it down, a bitter consolation, and solemnly allows the uniformed troops to enter the ship behind her.

UNIT doesn't care. She can hear them rattling about in the console room behind her, dozens of pairs of boots stomping unceremoniously on the grating. The temporal physicists prattle on in awe about cosmic transducers and regression sequences, the archivists snap photos of technology they can't hope to understand, and everyone, _everyone_, is amazed that it is bigger on the inside.

They're here to help - she knows they're here to help, she asked them to, after all - and yet in the moment, it feels like she's leading a tourist group traipsing through her best friend's funeral. Which is highly accurate and inaccurate at the same time - UNIT had barely let her see the body, barely let her say goodbye before it was incinerated on the order of a UNIT scientific advisor named Kate, who at the same time that she denied Rose entrance to say goodbye one final time, told her she was so, so sorry. Oh, the irony.

She's not quite sure what universe this is - not yet. It's the first one she's come through that has a Doctor in it - _had_ a Doctor in it - and Rose has the sonic screwdriver to prove it. She's clutching it inside her coat like a weapon, like a lifeline, like the only thing that's worth having in this godforsaken multiverse. UNIT doesn't know she has it, of course not, or they'd be so, _so_ sorry to take it away from her as well.

She asked them to come here, but she can't wait to get away from them.

Something spurs her to walk on, putting her left foot in front of her right in front of her left, towards the corridor, slipping past the UNIT crew all around her. As if they'd notice that she were gone with all the new technology for them to explore. God, they sound almost gleeful. They're like little kids on Christmas morning, opening their presents in a tomb. She feels a little niggling in the back of her head_ ... do it ... do it_. She doesn't know if it's the TARDIS, which seems so weak, or her own curiosity to see if this was her Doctor, her TARDIS, her ... everything.

She turns her back and walks on, unnoticed, out of the console room and down the hall, disappearing like a ghost.

-DWDWDWDWDW-

She can't find her room. She tries and begs and pleads, but all to no avail. She walks in circles for an hour but it's nowhere to be found. She's not even sure why she _wants_ to see it - it's not as if she wants anything she left here, but she wants to know that it still is here all the same. It's as if the very fact that she can't find it is more than reason enough for her to keep looking. The thought occurs to her that he may have chucked it, sealed off the room from the rest of the ship and dumped it into the vortex. Keeping it could have been too painful for him, and that very thought is too painful for her. She'd never come across any previous companion's rooms during her time here, after all. Spurred on, needing to prove to herself that it's still here, she races through halls to no avail.

Well, not to _no_ avail. Several times, she finds his room, which she'd been in often enough. In fact, the more often she turns a corner looking for her room, the more often she finds his. The first time ... it's a beautiful novelty, and opening the door steals the breath from her lungs. It smells like him, and she half expects to see him pop his head up and say 'hello'. (Or more, than 'hello'. Or, less than 'hello', if there's a chance for a snog or a shag - and she is so, so not going to think about that until she manages to fix this mess and get him back). There's a white oxford discarded alongside a brown tie on an armchair near his bed, and at first she touches them gently, almost gingerly. It's him, or at least a part of him, it's among all that's left. She'd almost forgotten how small his shirts were, how thin he was, and the very fact that she's forgotten these things breaks her heart almost as much as being back here in the first place. Within milliseconds she grabs them and buries her face in the bundle, trying and failing to not cry. It's the first time she's let herself take a moment to properly mourn in what feels like years at this point and it almost feels good. She sinks down onto his bed, hardly registering shoving the tie into her pocket, timelines be damned, as she clutches to the shirt and sobs.

Something uncomfortable pokes at her thigh, distracting her from her grief and she looks over to see some sort of a long metal tube protruding into her upper thigh. Suddenly, she finally takes note of his bed, which is a haphazard mess, full of metal bits and bobs of unrecognizeable ... wait.

Not unrecognizeable. Very, very not unrecognizeable.

The memory floods her senses, rattling through her mind like a bumpy ride through the vortex, and hurling itself on the floor at her feet. How could she forget this? It was the day she'd left, she'd come in and flopped down on the bed next to him, comfortably close, but arguably platonically so. He was building ... something. He'd told her what it was. He'd told her and here it was, right in front of her, and she couldn't remember what he'd said to her. A temporal distorter - or a space distorter? A distorter, definitely - she remembers how he held it up to his eye like a telescope to make her laugh, and how all she could concentrate on was his mouth and his moistened lips and the way he was smiling at her, just inches away from her, and on his _bed_. The details she thought she'd never forget have gotten lost in the tragedy of the day, and in the hard work and pain and blood of the intervening years. She picks up the contraption gently, and sets it down carefully on the table beside her, not noticing the slight vibration it's been giving off since the moment it came into contact with her thigh.

Turning back towards the bed, she looks down at the pillow and sees a single, long blonde hair.

It looks too long to be hers - is it hers? How long was her hair then? Was it truly this shade of blonde? Or is this some backwards, cruel universe and does it belong to someone else? _Who_ else? And where, where the _fuck_, is her room?

Something flips in her stomach and clutches at her heart, squeezing it painfully and Rose suddenly feels like she can't breathe. She's forgotten so many little things – has he forgotten her too? Was she so easily replaceable?

Or perhaps he never met her here, in this strange universe. Perhaps he met someone else entirely. She discards the thought almost immediately – she'd been tracking timelines, after all. She existed here. Canary Wharf happened here. He'd lost her here. She knows this deeply and viscerally, it's a thought that's as clear and as simple to her as her own name.

She's not sure if that makes things seem better, or worse.

She brushes the pillow off, under the pretext of neatening it, and opens the door to leave the room, still clutching the shirt.

-DWDWDWDWDW-

This isn't the corridor.

The thought is a stupid one, an obvious one, because of course this isn't a bloody corridor. It's another bedroom, another bloody bedroom that isn't bloody hers ... but wait, is that a cradle? She looks around and sees what appears to be a changing table and rocking chair. Is this a nursery?

Her breathe somehow both quickens and catches in her throat at the same time as she looks around, awed. She slowly enters the room, Alice stepping through the looking glass. She hears a faint hum, and although she knows - _she knows_ - it is not coming from the TARDIS, she chocks it up to the TARDIS anyway.

She approaches the cradle slowly, quietly, with more caution and uncertainty than she's been approaching Weevils and Sontarans alike in the intervening years.

Had this room been here before? She's certainly never seen it. Which of course could mean nothing, the TARDIS has an infinite number of rooms (except for hers, apparently) ... but a nursery?

A memory flickers to her mind, him saying he was a dad ... once. She's not sure if it's grief or frustration or jealousy bubbling up, and she can't help but think of that long blonde hair and the fact that she has never seen this room before and all of a sudden her stomach is churning. Is this even her Doctor? Or is he someone else's? Or perhaps he _was_ hers and is now in the arms of someone new?

She reaches the small wooden cradle finally, coming to a stop as quietly as possible. It's empty, of course, but she mindlessly reaches a hand down to gently rock it anyway. Something pulls her towards it, like she knows she should love it – has loved it, will love it, loves it even now though she might not know it yet. As soon as her fingers touch it she feels a tiny, faint jolt, barely noticeable, and hears the unmistakeable sound of a baby cooing.

-DWDWDWDWDW-

The door flings open behind her, which is impossible because she knows that she left it open, and she sees a man enter the room. It's not a man she's ever met before, nor one that seems to even notice her. Indeed, he walks right through her, as if she is just an image. She's too shocked to register much about him as it happens so quickly, almost inhumanly so – sandy hair, opulent dressing gown. There's something timeless about him, as if the tendrils of time itself would untangle to let him slip through. She would love to say that she would recognize him if he were the Doctor, that she'd be able to sense him anywhere (and wasn't that indeed what she had been telling Torchwood all along?) – but she truly has no idea. She stays rooted to the spot as he reaches down and gently picks up an infant from the cradle, and makes his way to the rocking chair. He radiates care and nurturing and love, and she knows somehow that he is the child's father. He's singing something, something that Rose can't quite understand. It sounds almost like the audio on an old movie, slightly distorted and grainy and she can't even tell if it's English. Not that the TARDIS seems to be in any shape to translate, but the TARDIS hardly seemed to be in any shape to create this … this … whatever it was, either.

She starts to take a step forward towards the rocking chair, and hesitates. She suddenly feels out of place, like she is intruding. Her leather jacket and boots feel too hard for this room, too heavy. Paradoxically, at the same time, she feels too light – this man walked right through her after all. It strikes that she doesn't belong here – this was not meant for her eyes. The thought is like a slap to the face, her suddenly reddened cheeks the evidence of how hard it has hit her. She watches the man gently rock the child and place a gentle kiss to the top of his (her?) head.

Rose quickly backs away, leaving the nursery and stepping back into the Doctor's room.


	2. Chapter 2

Except this does not appear to be the Doctor's room.

It takes her a moment to process this, because the effect of somehow re-entering the nursery she _just left_ is disorienting. More disorienting, in fact, than even her pan-dimensional jumps, because then - at least - she is in control of propelling herself into a new universe. Now however, she is acutely aware that her movements are subject to some force other than her own will. She feels a momentary flare of frustration, almost anger, about this – after all, she _clearly_ doesn't belong here and could she _possibly_ make it more obvious that she bloody well doesn't want to be here – but the feeling fades almost instantaneously, replaced by a somber realization. This entire, wonderful, beautiful ship is dying, and if she's trying to communicate with Rose, then Rose is inclined to steel herself up, swallow down any hurt and listen. She suddenly realizes she's still clutching the Doctor's shirt she had picked up in the other room, and she balls it up even tighter, wrapping it around and around her hand. Something to hold onto, because God knows she feels like she needs to hold on to _something_.

She takes a deep breath and her eyes scan the room warily and tactically, as if this were a Torchwood field operation.

The rocking chair is empty, father and child having since left in the seconds since Rose last saw them there, and she thinks for a moment that she is alone again in the nursery. It takes the gentle sound of a baby's coo and the almost-melodic response of a woman's soft laughter for Rose to realize that she is wrong. Despite herself, and despite her brave intentions to listen to whatever the TARDIS is trying to tell her, Rose's heart flips once more and lands in her now-churning stomach.

Hidden slightly behind the cradle, from Rose's perspective, lying on the plush carpeted floor, is a woman and an infant who is slightly older than the one she just saw moments ago. The woman's dark hair is long and flowing, almost obscuring her face, and she wears a dressing down not dissimilar to that of the man Rose just saw. She smiles broadly at the child, clearly enraptured, as she tickles the baby's fingers and toes and the baby smiles delightedly back up at her.

Rose dares not move. Her mind races with more questions than she can process. She wonders if this is the man's child, if this was _(is? will be?)_ his wife, if this is indeed the Doctor at all. If he loves this woman. If he mourned, or will mourn her. If he still thinks about her. She wonders if he minds the plush carpet, or the curtains, or the doors. If he'd mind a mortgage. If he'd do everything – anything – in his power to get these people back if he lost them, parallel worlds and dimensional walls be damned (and then she remembers what happened to his home planet and hates herself for the thought). She wonders _when _they are, and who they are.

Rose doesn't have long to wonder. The man reenters the room and sits down behind the woman on the carpet, sliding his arms lovingly around her waist and nuzzling his nose into her neck as she leans back into his arms and smiles back up at him. The man's hand lingers protectively over the woman's stomach and Rose's breath catches to realize from the slight swell that the woman appears to be expecting another child. The man soon joins into the woman's game with the baby, tickling its belly and feet and legs and chin and laughing as the baby laughs back up at him. For the first time, Rose notices the same ornate circles on both the man's and the woman's robes that she would often see all over the TARDIS – a language she could never read, never understand, and which has always hovered slightly beyond her reach. She suddenly feels like she can barely breathe. And as much as she wants to leave, flee, forget she ever saw this, she finds herself rooted to the spot, staring at the kind of life she suddenly doubts she could ever have.

The whole scene radiates peace and love. They look beautiful, they all look beautiful _together_ and Rose's eyes sting with tears at the sheer serenity of it all. If this is him … _he deserves this_, she thinks. He deserves all of this. This is a man at peace, a man with no need to run. She wants him for herself, but damn, he deserves this regardless. Finally, _finally_, the TARDIS hums in response, the intensity of its agreement startling Rose: it wants this for him, too. Rose swallows and lets out a long breath. She doesn't know quite what to feel anymore.

-DWDWDWDWDWDW-

Rose again tries several times to leave, to _please_ leave, to find the Doctor's room so that she can backtrack. Regardless of what she feels, or is not letting herself feel, she has a job to do. UNIT must be wondering where she is by now – not that her presence is likely to be _missed_ by them, of course, kids in a transdimensional candy store such as they are. Much as Rose asked the ship to help her find _her_ room, she asks for help finding _his_ room, and again receives only silence as a reply. She tries _(oh she tries …)_ not to take this personally. She knows the ship is weak, too weak perhaps to grant any such requests, but she asks all the same. She walks through the doorway and out of the nursery over and over again, only to reenter at exactly the spot she exited. She soon realizes she seems to be skipping forward in time, stepping across months or years every time she crosses the threshold. It's always the same room, but she begins to notice differences, small ones.

The small wooden cradle becomes a crib, which becomes a bed.

The child changes too, of course, becoming older (and Rose is now sure that it is _clearly_ a boy, given one ill-timed entrance on her part which she'd prefer not to think about, _ta_).

The beautiful plush carpet develops a large, ugly burn in the middle of it, and is soon removed altogether, leaving only the bare floor behind.

Quickly, the boy becomes old enough to play with a friend, even. Rose walks in on him building some sort of a robot once, with another young man of about the same age on the now-carpetless floor. They are talking and laughing – once again, Rose can't quite make out the words, but the young visitor (or perhaps brother?) seems to be howling with laughter at his friend's antics and keeps repeating a word that almost sounds like 'Theta.'

This is one of the last times she sees him truly smiling. Nearly always, she finds him sitting alone, solitary and pensive. Not quite sad, just … _waiting_. There is always a multitude of books, and tomes, and cloaks, strewn about the room. They are all heavy and dark and solemn, just like the expression on his face. She never sees him looking at a single one.

He often seems wistful to her, almost mournful. Once, she almost doesn't see him at first when she enters. He looks to be a teenager now, sitting by the window, staring up at the stars with the curtains billowing carelessly around him, haphazardly tied back as if their very presence is an annoyance. (The curtains are soon gone from the room too, and she watches him as he pushes the bed directly under the window, well-defined muscles taut and straining slightly as he carefully maneuvers the bed into place. She knows somehow, without knowing _how_ she knows, yet without a single doubt in her mind, that he wants to be as close to the stars as he can, and she smiles).


	3. Chapter 3

She crosses the threshold over and over again.

Most times, she lingers in the doorway for a moment or two before crossing again, finding herself smiling slightly at him as he tinkers with bits and bobs of things that look quite alien to her. Sometimes, she crosses back hurriedly – such as when she sees him, now a young man, with a young lady wearing what appears to be highly ceremonial dress, standing awkwardly by the bed and looking uncomfortably at each other. Her heart beats slightly faster and her cheeks redden slightly as she rushes back through the threshold, and she's not sure why she feels something almost like jealousy flare suddenly in her chest.

She's almost surprised when she sees him change faces. Or at least she thinks – _hopes_ - he's changing faces, and has not disappeared entirely with a new man taking his place. Somehow, she doesn't think she could bear the thought of that. He becomes older, then younger, then older again, and his eyes become deeper and darker and progressively more familiar. She can't even bear to phrase her suspicions right now. Her heart would be broken if she were wrong …

Once, upon entering the room she can't even see his face at all. He's crouching on the floor, rocking back and forth with his arms completely covering his head, wearing a long dark velvet jacket and fitted trousers. They're almost completely covered in soot and what appears to be blood, full of holes, and she can smell smoke and the searing stench of burning metal. Although the TARDIS is quiet now, she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn't quiet _then_, and can almost hear the ghostly echo of the cloister bell clanging. Rose's stomach churns – not because of the blood, or because of the smell of what she knows is death – but because she knows she can't touch him. She can't help him, she can't make this – make _him – _better. She can tell by the shaking of his shoulders that he's crying – no, he's _sobbing – _and more than anything she wishes she could take him into her arms, just to ease his pain. She tries to go to him, hold him, knowing all the while that she can't.

And she's right – she can't. She's denied an embrace, her arms passing right through him as if through an image. Still, she sits with him, watching and waiting, willing him to feel the comfort she so desperately wants to give him. She can't – _she __won't_ – leave him like this. Eventually his sobs become quiet, and she steps regretfully across the threshold again, leaving him alone with his grief.

DWDWDWDW

The next time she crosses, the room is dark, so dark that it takes her eyes a moment to adjust. The soft background hum Rose has been hearing has dissipated, so slowly, that she barely can hear it at all now.

It takes a moment before she sees him – _him_ him, _her _him, and her heart soars and flips and is beating in her throat. Whoever, whatever else she has been witnessing, she knows in her bones that this is _him_. Her Doctor.

He's standing with his back to her, legs apart, silhouetted against the backdrop of a window. Oh, but she'd recognize that hair _anywhere. _She is vaguely aware of long curtains on the windows, and the rustle of a carpet beneath her feet, and what almost looks like a London skyline peeking out from the window behind him.

"I've been waiting for you, you know," he murmurs, turning around slowly to face her.

It's the first time she's been able to clearly make out words since this entire debacle started, and it throws her off-guard. Reflexively, she takes a step back but catches herself on the doorframe just as she would have stumbled back out of the room. She doesn't want to leave him. Not _this_ him_, _not ever.

It's also the first time she's heard his _voice_ since that horrible beach, and the thought brings tears to her eyes and an almost paradoxical smile to her face. She wants to run to him, hold him tightly, but she knows she'd pass right though him and so she stays standing where she is, feet riveted to the ground, hands clutching the doorframe so hard that her knuckles are white.

He stares through her, almost _at_ her, though she's far too used to being a ghost here now. There's a sensual smirk playing around the corners of his lips and she suddenly notices that he's on the phone. Her mind once again goes into overdrive – she wonders who is talking to him, what they are saying, why he is looking like that. A sudden reassuring hum from the TARDIS quiets her thoughts, and she suddenly knows that she has no reason to be worried. He looks so _hungry_, almost wolfish, in a way that she knows he never would have let himself look around her. There's so much to take in at once – he seems to look _older_ than she remembers somehow, the crinkles around his eyes deeper than she remembers. Were it lighter in the room, she swears she would be able to make out a few grey hairs, even.

Most of all, she's captivated by his chest. She's never seen him shirtless before, but she's entranced by his pale skin, the fine musculature with the smattering of freckles, the spattering of hair across his breastbone, down his chest, trailing _lower, _and –

"… and I can't help but notice, someone seems to have taken my shirt," he says into the phone, his eyes suddenly flicking up casually and seeming to meet her own.

She starts at the contact, her stomach catapulting as she realizes that she is holding his oxford, still scrunched in her hand. _He couldn't mean me …_

He chuckles almost sensually into the phone, flopping back onto a sofa in the dimly lit room and languorously crossing his long legs. A sofa, she thinks for a minute, that almost looks a bit like her own. _It can't be …_

"Wouldn't you like to know," he smirks. "You'll just have to come and find me. Perhaps we can put that tie to good use later as well."

She starts at that, her breath catching as she almost blushes. She wonders if he could possibly mean what it sounds like he means, what is going through his mind, as he sits alone, in the dark –

"I'm never alone," he whispers, interrupting her thoughts. "I have _you_."

With a soft, low chuckle he flips the phone in his hand and places it back on the receiver. For just a split second before he hangs up, Rose hears the pleased, comforting hum of the TARDIS and could swear she sees the glint of a wedding ring on his hand, before everything goes dark.

DWDWDWDW

As she comes to, she opens her eyes and jolts upright with a start. She's on a bed, _his bed_, back in his bedroom. Heart palpitating in her chest, she looks left and right and all around for him, only to be greeted by the eerie silence of the empty room on the dying ship. Even the TARDIS isn't humming anymore, suddenly seeming even weaker and more fragile than when she came on board.

She does a quick inventory of her surroundings – the Doctor's sonic screwdriver is still in her pocket, along with the tie that she had barely registered putting in there when she first came on board the ship. His white oxford is still tightly clenched in her hand.

Suddenly, she looks at the nightstand and sees the long tube there which had been so uncomfortably wedged against her leg when she first entered the room. Wait - was it a temporal – _distorter_? Rose's mind races again, wondering exactly how distorted everything she'd seen had been. _Had _it been real - _will _it be real? Slowly and cautiously, she touches the contraption with her fingers, but it stays off and completely silent, not responding to her touch in the slightest. Slowly, she rises, and taking one last look around the room, moves towards the threshold she has gotten to know so well during this visit. Taking a deep breath, she opens the door –

-and steps into the gray, metal familiarity of the TARDIS corridor.

Turning around suddenly, an almost-sob escaping from her throat, she shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes and quickly backtracks over the threshold, returning into the Doctor's bedroom once more, and over the threshold again. Nothing changes. Nothing shifts. She is alone in the empty bedroom, and the empty corridor. She allows herself one moment, hugging the empty doorframe and letting a tear roll down her cheek before swiping it away with the arm of her battle-hardened leather jacket.

Schooling her features into a mask she'd perfected since starting at Torchwood, she puts one foot in front of the other, and walks out the way she came.

DWDWDWDW

It isn't until several days have passed that she lets herself think of it again. It's not even _her_ thinking of it, or asking the question. Rose had forced the incident out of her mind with military precision, bolting any and all thoughts about it shut and throwing away the key.

"… _were you and him?"_

In the moment, she didn't answer, she _couldn't _answer that. Was what she saw even real, even _them_? A potential future, or a lost past in a universe she'd never know? Her mind mulls over the conversation with Donna for hours after it occurs. She feels one last gently hum, one last reassurance, a vibration in the timelines letting her know that it _could _be, and it _would _be, if she'd only let it be so. He deserved this, and he needed her, and in time, everything would be okay.

She thinks of her grief, the man she'd loved, the boy he'd once been and the man he might one day be. She thinks of the dying ship, walking her through his past and into his future. _Were_ they … ? She still doesn't know. But when she finds him again, she knows they _will_ be.


End file.
